Ю4
THE MESTA
In view of this virtual elimination of the town alcalde, one can
ιmderstand why no objection was raised by the municipalities
when Ferdinand and Isabella began to substitute the corregidor,
the crown representative in the towns, for the alcalde as the
associate of the entregador. The change was made very grad-
ually, and at first no ulterior motive appeared. It soon became
evident, however, that the inevitable effect of the new procedure
was well understood by the Catholic Kings; and it became one of
their most effective measures for the strengthening of the power
of the crown in the scattered municipalities remote from the
court.1 In the succeeding reign the towns awoke to the danger
confronting their ancient liberties through the menacing coopera-
tion of these agents of the central government, the entregador and
the corregidor. When the forces of separatism and nationalism
finally resorted to violence in the uprising of the Comuneros in
1520, the entregadores catae in for a large share of denunciation in
the Cortes, courts, ahd public meetings generally.
This outburst of hostility toward those officials is to be explained
quite as much by their growing arrogance, which was largely in-
spired by the strongly centralizing policy of the crown, as by the
newly born opposition of the towns and country districts to that
policy. Throughout the sixteenth century there were repeated
demands that the various town governments should be allowed to
appoint specially delegated officers to sit with the entregador and
to check him in his rulings.2 The replies of the crown acknowl-
edged that the law required the presence of the local alcalde in the
court of the entregador, but no further assurance wa⅛ given that
matters would be improved, other than that the Royal Council
would take up the question through its senior member, the
President of the Mesta. The evil continued, and the protests
likewise.
The eagerness of the entregadores to hear cases having no con-
nection with the canadas deprived the local officials of a good
portion of their income, and thus aggravated the friction between
1 Arch. Mesta, C-ι, Câceres, 1490, contains several documents on this point.
2 Cortes, Burgos, 1515, pet. 26; Madrid, 1528, pet. 155; Segovia, 1532, pet. 53;
Valladolid, 1542, pet. 62.
the Entregador and the towns
io5
the opposing interests.1 The anger of the town justices was
further provoked by the petty chicanery of the Mesta, which
sought to secure the assignment of some well paid local bailiff
for the business of accompanying the entregador. The vote of
this official always conformed with that of the visiting magistrate,
because he had no interest at stake to warrant his checking the
entregador. The town justice, on the other hand, was always
anxious to safeguard his own share in profits from fines, and in-
sisted, therefore, that he was the proper official to accompany the
Mesta judge. But the pressure of the great sheep owners’ or-
ganization was too strong for the local justices to overcome, and
the Cortes protested long and earnestly, but in vain, against such
brazen violations of local autonomy.2
Under the later Hapsburgs, however, in the seventeenth cen-
tury, the Mesta no longer had the upper hand. It had suffered
severely in the general economic decay for which it was itself
partly responsible. Furthermore, the local interests were finding
various means whereby they could thwart the efforts of the herds-
men to maintain the old order of things. The century was
crowded with drastic sentences of the high appellate courts re-
versing those of the entregadores, and with exemptions bought
from the crown by the towns. The Mesta led a most unhappily
active life in its attempts to have these grants of exemption
rescinded. The aid which it usually invoked was that of its
proverbial ally, the Royal Council, whose senior member was its
own president. But even the prestige of that exalted body did
not suffice to check the steady, determined rise of the opposition
of the towns.
The beginnings of that opposition to the intrusion of the entre-
gador, and the success of certain attempts to nullify his prestige
by securing exemptions from his jurisdiction, were, in fact, quite
t Cortes, Toledo, 1538, pet. 85. Cortes de Castilla, v (adic.), pp. 599,600 (1576):
a protest against the hearing of appeals from the decisions of local judges by entre-
gadores, even though the question involved was one dealing with sheep. The Royal
Council had upheld the entregador in this. Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 80, a decree of
1569.
* Cortes de Castilla, v (adic.), p. 580 (1576); ix, pp. 261-265 (1587); xiii, pp.
322-330 (1594), xvi, p. 677 (1598).